Eight regions of Russia can be completely submerged within 50 years. This conclusion was reached by Ural scientists from the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Physics of the UrFU, together with colleagues from several institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, France, Germany and Japan, writes on Monday, February 20, Znak.com.
According to experts, such consequences can be caused by the melting of permafrost. In the risk zone, in particular, were the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions, the Yamalo-Nenets district, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yakutia and the Komi Republic.
“According to monitoring data at various international stations, the temperatures of the permafrost layer in the Arctic have changed dramatically over 50 years. Previously, it was about minus 10 degrees, by 2015 it is already about minus 5 degrees. When it is plus 1 degree, the permafrost soil will melt and everything will collapse. In 50 years, there will be a disaster. Even, perhaps, faster, since now all processes are on the increase,”said Vyacheslav Zakharov, head of the laboratory of physics of climate and environment at UrFU.
According to him, the regions of Western Siberia, where its layer is thinnest, will be the first to suffer from the melting of permafrost. “It will flood all the cities of Yamal: Salekhard, Novy Urengoy, Labytnangi. Accordingly, the entire oil and gas production infrastructure will disappear,”Zakharov added.
Scientists also note the deterioration of the situation with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Konstantin Gribanov, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, explained that heating the atmosphere leads to the release of carbon dioxide, including from the World Ocean (there it is stored almost 100 times more than now in the Earth's atmosphere) and swamps, which begin to rot due to an increase in temperature.
“In the atmosphere of Venus, more than 90 percent is CO2, the pressure of carbon dioxide there is about 90 Earth atmospheres. The temperature on this planet is about 450 degrees Celsius, at this temperature lead melts (…). There is almost as much carbon on Earth as there is in Venus's atmosphere, if we throw all of our carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, we'll have a second Venus here. No life,”concluded Gribanov.
Znak.com notes that a team of scientists is currently working to create a verified model that predicts climate changes in the Arctic part of Russia for the next 50 years. Its development is expected to be completed by 2020.